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Fun Facts About My Country


arekathevampyre

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24 minutes ago, Ortac said:

I've been to ten! And I'm not even American! :P

I've been to Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Montana, North Dakota, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michgan, Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio. :P

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paperbackreader
9 hours ago, arekathevampyre said:

hmm ... too many neighbouring countries .. Thailand ? Malaysia ? Indonesia ? 

Middle one! 

On 30/11/2017 at 5:06 PM, Ortac said:

I think the differences between British English and American English make a pretty reasonable comparison. Different accents, some words and terms are different, but overall the same language and we can understand each other no problem. 

I can say the same about Venezuelan Spanish vs Cuban Spanish vs Spanish Spanish, and Malaysian Cantonese vs Hong Kong Cantonese vs Guangdong Cantonese and even down to Malaysian English vs Singaporean English.... Etc. 

 

Regional differences makes for some hilarity though, for example, the Spanish tend to use guapo / guapa to say cute,... Say that to a Cuban and it more often means angry rather than cute; instead they use Linda/lindo to say cute (more attributed to pretty or beautiful in Spanish Spanish!!!!) 

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16 minutes ago, Yato said:

I've been to Washington

I like Washington. Seattle is a nice city 8)

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41 minutes ago, Ortac said:

I like Washington. Seattle is a nice city 8)

Seattle is the worst part about the state. Spokane is way better.

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9 minutes ago, Yato said:

Seattle is the worst part about the state. Spokane is way better.

Did I say Seattle is nice? Oops sorry, my mistake. I meant Tacoma! :lol::P

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1 hour ago, Ortac said:

Did I say Seattle is nice? Oops sorry, my mistake. I meant Tacoma! :lol::P

Tacoma is what Seattle was 40 years ago.  

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4 hours ago, Ortac said:

I've been to ten! And I'm not even American! :P

Only 2 (soon to be 3) :(

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We have the second oldest liberal constitution after USA. But that was only cos of reactionary forces winning Napolelonic Wars.

 

Taco is a tradition on firdays here :P No joke. 

 

Conscription is mandatory here (you have to serve when you're 18. And are the property of the militry until you are 45 if you're non officer and 55 if you¨'r officer. Not as in the US where it is a potential list for a draft, here you become jailed and a criminal if oyu don't). 

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Hermit Advocate

It exists (I think).

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On 30/11/2017 at 6:45 PM, daveb said:

Brits would probably say the same about British English (except change "English loanwords" to "American loanwords"), compared to American English (and Canadian English?). :lol: 

I would say both are proper, just different. :D And all living languages, at least as spoken/written by most people, incorporate loanwords.

Brits probably have much more slang than Americans do though. Just look at how many word variations we have for bread. 

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hm... so I technically have three official countries, and I've listed facts from two of them, so now the third so it doesn't feel left out, but it's big, so I'm going to list facts about the state I was born in instead :P 

 

- Kool-aid was invented there

- there's a replica of stonehenge made out of cars there

- there are a few fast food restaurants that are pretty much only found here (and a little bit in the neighboring states): Runza, Amigos and Valentino pizza

-  Arbor-day was founded there

- Corn... the football team is named after cornhusks, a hat you can buy at most football fan stores is a plastic corn cob that you can wear on your head, one of the most popular summer jobs in the city I was born in, was waking up at 4am and going and working in the corn fields (I never did this, because I like sleep..)  

- in the biggest city there is a zoo with the worlds largest nocturnal exhibit and indoor swamp, the biggest cat complex in North America and one of the biggest biggest indoor rainforests in the world and it also has one of the biggest indoor deserts in the world.  Oh, and it has the biggest glazed geodesic dome in the world... 

- the legislature is non-partisan and uni-cameral (no other state is like that)

- the national forest there is the largest hand planted forest in the States...   

-and last but not least, it's got terrible state flag... (I honestly wish they'd redesign it so that it actually looks like a flag and isn't just a seal on a blue background, it isn't even a good seal, it's way over crowded, and why are there mountains??? there are no mountains, sure, in the west you might start to see the Rockies, but they aren't part of the state... though it isn't, it would be worthy of being the shame of the state.. ) 

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RandomPerson1996
On 30/11/2017 at 10:26 AM, swirl_of_blue said:

The everyman's rights in Finland give every person the right to roam freely on uncultivated land, even if the land is privately owned. You can hike, camp, pick berries, mushrooms and flowers, fish with a rod and line and even move along waterways with your boat. Of course walking straight into someone's back yard is not allowed, but as long as you do not disturb anyone or the nature (for example collecting bird eggs, felling trees or lighting open fire) you can enjoy the nature freely. And no landowner can choose to restrict these rights - only the government can set up restrictions for example areas used as strict nature reserves for research purposes. Most of the unihnabited land (which means a lot of land - Finland is the most sparsely populated country in Europe) is free for anyone to enjoy.

My country has the same, I love it so much freedom as a child. 

And if you want to buy anything stronger than beer you have to go to The Wine Monopoly/Vinmonopolet, owned and controled by the state. 

It is the landlocked country with the longest coastline in comparison to size.

Also we are well known for our Metal music, but even the metalheads usually don't listen to "our" bands. 

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  • 2 weeks later...

The Swedish Chef from The Muppet Show is the Danish Chef here...

 

There are parts of this country (not so much where I live now, but were I used to live) that are visited by a female angel instead of Santa. The weird thing about this person (das Christkind) is they started out as baby jesus and somehow morphed over the years into a female angel... 

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About 50 years ago, our Prime Minister at the time went to the beach one day, and then disappeared, presumably drowned. Since then, several swimming pools, some Naval related things and some fisheries reserves have been named after him as memorials.

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-I can't think of any other country out there that is as welcoming to immigrants as we are (obviously there are several, but due to the US, we end up looking far better for being this way). I mean, we even invest heavily in ads to attract strong talented immigrants to our country. This reflects heavily in the very multicultural feel you get coming here. And when I say immigrants, I mean actually giving these people a shot at becoming permanent residents, employees and eventually--citizens. 

 

 

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  • 1 month later...
On 12/1/2017 at 6:57 AM, XYZ96 said:

- it isn't illegal here to escape/flee prison (you'll still be brought back to prison if you still have time to serve though)

- the earliest known magazine was written here, some many many years ago :P 

- there's a snack, popular mostly with children, that is basically a marshmallow squished between two halves of a bread roll, it might sound weird, or even disgusting, but it is great

- we have a city that called "Essen" which is also the word for "food" and if you don't care about capital and lowercase letters, it's also the word for "eat", so "eating food in Essen" translates the "Essen essen in Essen" 

- we also have a region called "Baden" which, if you you don't care about capital or lowercase letters, is also the word for "bathe", in that region is a city called "Baden-Baden", so if you want to say "bathing in Baden-Baden in Baden" you'd say "Baden in Baden-Baden in Baden" :P 

 

and because I technically have more then one country, here are some facts to a country I'm a citizen of, but have never lived in :P 

  Reveal hidden contents

 

- it's a monarchy, and it's monarch lives on another continent

- there are two ways to get citizenship at birth,

a) be born there

b) be the offspring of someone who was born there (if you are however the offspring of someone who was born there, but weren't yourself born there, then your offspring will only be citizens if they are born there)

- you can order a picture of the Monarch from the government for free if you ask (and live there)... 

 

 

 

Germany? I totally love your sentences.

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4 minutes ago, amendax said:

Germany? I totally love your sentences.

yep :D

 

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scarletlatitude

I'm from Pennsylvania. Hershey's chocolate, Heinz ketchup, Crayola crayons, Peeps,  Pyrex, and Zippo lighters are all made here. :) 

 

Also we have Amish people, so there's that. 

 

 

 

Edit: Technically Hershey's and Heinz aren't mainly manufactured here anymore, but they did originate here so :P 

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On 2/1/2018 at 9:18 PM, XYZ96 said:

yep :D

 

Following the French question, is there any difference between the German that is spoken by the German, Austrian and Swiss?

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1 hour ago, amendax said:

Following the French question, is there any difference between the German that is spoken by the German, Austrian and Swiss?

yes, there are different dialects of all three of them, but High German, high Austrian and high Swiss are all different.. 

There are German dialects that are closer to Austrian and Swiss dialects then other German dialects are to Austrian and Swiss dialects though. Like Bavarian, Austrian and Tyrolean dialects belong to the dialect family Austro-Bavarian, so they have similarities in how they sound, and Alsatian and certain dialects in southern German along with Swiss-German dialects belong to Alemannic dialects. (and both Austro-Bavarian and Alemannic dialects belong to Upper German, which is basically just southern German..) 

The main difference I notice, is that Swiss German often has a more strong "ch"... 

In spelling a difference between Standard/High German and Swiss is that Swiss German no longer has "ß" 

 

here's weather forecasts in Swiss, Austrian and German German (I apologize if the weather isn't completely standard high whatever) 

Spoiler

 

German: 

Spoiler

 

 

Austrian: 

Spoiler

 

 

Swiss:

Spoiler

 

 

 

 

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3 hours ago, amendax said:

Following the French question, is there any difference between the German that is spoken by the German, Austrian and Swiss?

I am not sure if I really have the right to be answering this as I am not a German speaker, but anyway... 

 

I can't talk about Austria as I don't know enough about that country, but in terms of Germany and Switzerland, the German spoken in Germany is known as High German (Hochdeutsche) and is the "standard" version of the language. In Switzerland however, they speak Swiss German. The Swiss can understand High German perfectly well, but most Germans have great difficulty understanding Swiss German. Swiss German is only a spoken dialect, written German in Switzerland is pretty much the same as in Germany. 

 

If this is a difficult concept to grasp, the best comparison I can offer for English speakers is the difference between a very strong Scottish accent (maybe Glaswegian) and a neutral south of England accent. The Scottish use different words in some instances (such as "wee" instead of little) and their accent can be very strong, and the English may struggle to understand them, yet the way they write is no different to standard English. 

 

One difference I know between German and Swiss German is that the Swiss say "zwanzg" for 20 instead of zwanzig. 

 

Whilst the German spoken in Switzerland is a very distinctive dialect which differs greatly from the German spoken in Germany, the French that is spoken in Switzerland is not very different from that which is spoken in France (apart from a few notable differences in the words for certain numbers).

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On 2/4/2018 at 3:08 PM, Ortac said:

One difference I know between German and Swiss German is that the Swiss say "zwanzg" for 20 instead of zwanzig.

That's probably something common in many or most south/upper German (as in the language, not the nationality) accents and dialects.. 

 

on another note: 

- one of the things JFK is know for, is saying "I am jelly filled donut" instead of saying "I am a person from Berlin", fun fact though, he said both... "Berliner" (jelly filled donut, that in Berlin, if I remember right, has a different name..) and "Berliner" (person from Berlin) are homonyms, another example would be "Hamburger" (a hamburger) and "Hamburger" (a person from Hamburg). Grammatically how he said it is also fine, you can say (using american as an example) "ich bin ein/e Amerikaner/in" ("I am an american"), or you can say "Ich bin Amerikaner/in" ("I am american") they both work grammatically... 

- our national anthem, is specifically one verse of a song, not the whole song :P 

- there's a famous (joke) conspiracy that the town of Bielefeld (a very large large city), doesn't actually exist 

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SorryNotSorry

"Fun facts about the US" is an oxymoron, unless you're a hardcore masochist.

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Fun facts about the US:  

We have more separate cultures and ethnic groups than any other nation on earth

We think that the world outside the US is simply composed of vacation choices

We don't realize that we are still a teenage nation

We have a pre-teen President

Our national food is a McDonald's hamburger

 

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FinneganCatch

-We have the northern most permenantly inhbitated location on the planet

-it's far more common in my part of the country and far more dangerous to run into a moose than a bear

-Timmies, maple syrup, hockey and poutine have all been mentioned but bear repeating :)

 

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-You know you're talking to a Canadian, when the conversation at some point turns to the weather. We have 24/7 weather channels, weather apps galore, and weather is probably the most popular subject matter with regards to small talk. I've noticed most countries I've traveled to that the weather matters very little. I mean, where would we be without our two week forecasts?!

-Some of us will laugh at people who aren't from here during our winters, bundled up like crazy. Who are we kidding, though. Most Canadians will walk into a warm building, after walking in windy -40 degree weather, saying the same thing: "Holy f**** Christ it's cold!" or a joke about wanting to move to Florida. I think I've heard every single variation of that joke, from working in retail in the past. That, or "cold enough for you?!"

-You know you're Canadian if you know the what the words: "barn burner", "dandy", "dipsy doodle", "noggin" or "tuque" mean. If you instantly knew a tuque goes on your noggin, bonus points for you.

-Only country I can think of, where even in the midst of winter, you'll still have people barbecuing and you're bound to see people wearing shorts still.

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The nod.

 

It is an universally acknowledged greeting among men in the North of the UK. WHEN you're both passing each other by on a casual stroll.

 

Can be done downwards or upwards.

 

Can be combined with "alright" to greet but not necessary. You normally use "alright" with the nod when you're on more familiar ground with the passerby. For complete strangers, you just nod.

 

The nod and look you give as you nod is semi-serious. No big motions. It is a short nod. You don't do it with a great big smile on your face. Just no.

 

My theory is the nod as a greeting originates from our Northern farmers. I like to imagine that due to heavy and noisy machinery, if a passerby came along there was no way for the farmer to verbalise their greeting for the passerby to hear and so the nod was used.

 

I quite like my theory. :D

 

Since I touched on it, here in the north we also use "alright" for hello or hi. This amusingly can confuse some people from outside the UK as my own experience can attest to (as can my sister's).

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